Five sentence summary
9-8-8 is a nationwide crisis line that anyone can call at anytime to be connected to a trained crisis counselor, but it's not exactly being forthright about connections to the police. The crisis hotline uses non-consensual active rescue, meaning they will notify emergency services and/or the police if they feel someone's life is at risk, and they will do so without the person's permission. Given what we know about police and people in crisis, Black people, trans people, and other identities and intersections, we need to be careful about recommending these resources to students.
Starting July 16th, 9-8-8 goes nation-wide as a crisis number and alternative to calling 9-1-1 for emergencies that could be better served by crisis counselors. Great, right? Dial this number and you're connected to trained crisis counselors. We should add it to our resource lists for students, right?
I'm definitely not. It's billed as confidential & anonymous, and it's not truly. Calls are traced and police can be notified without the caller's consent. That's right: Those in crisis may think they're only chatting with a counselor when they're about to be "actively rescued" by police. This is called non-consensual active rescue and it's included in the section titled, "Best Practices to Operate Regional Practice Crisis Call Centers" in Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA)'s best practices report, along with implementing GPS-enabled technology and incorporating called ID. Even if you don't disclose your name and address, calls can be located with high accuracy, and none of this is being discussed or shared by the majority of media outlets.
Yes, we deserve a crisis call center that operates nation-wide. Yes, we deserve crisis care. But we also deserve the right to refuse police help. We deserve a say in whether or not we'd like emergency responders to show up at our house. We deserve the right to actually be anonymous.
As it stands, 9-8-8 is not safe for undocumented people, anyone who is Black, transgender, and people with countless other identities systematically and regularly discriminated against and targeted by the police (including the mentally ill; people with untreated mental illness 16 times more likely to be killed by police, in 2021, 104 people were killed after responding to reports of someone behaving erratically, higher likelihood police will shoot an unarmed Black man who appears mentally ill than a white man behaving in a similar way). We absolutely need a crisis line. We need one that is truly safe for everyone to call and, as of right now, that's not 9-8-8. I'm not recommending these services to my students. If 9-8-8 were expanded so that trained health care workers could be sent (with permission), I would recommend 9-8-8 wholeheartedly. As of now, I can't list 9-8-8 as a resource for crises. I don't want my students to ever feel like their life was ruined by a non-consensual active rescue. How to really help
Instead of 9-8-8, I list Trans Lifeline, Black Line, and Samaritans for crisis support without police. Although 9-8-8 and other crisis lines might be good resources for times when students are definitely not in crisis, sending students to a crisis line that potentially calls the police is harmful, especially for students from marginalized backgrounds.
Dec 2023 Update: Due to funding troubles, Trans Lifeline will be unavailable from Dec 18th to Jan 1st and will have reduced hours of support starting in 2024. See their website for the most recent updates. I also list other local and affordable sources for care in addition to what I know about the services my own institution provides. Mental health is health but not all students will feel comfortable asking for help or know where to go. Even if none of my students use these resources, I include them with the hope that this will help spark discussion and normalize this type of care. Perhaps it will also provide another signal that I am serious when I tell students to come talk to me if they are struggling at any point. If you're considering listing mental health resources for your students, please do your own homework. Know if your school has a six month waiting list to see a therapist or if there are any fees associated with certain care. Know if there are Black counselors, Latinx counselors, autistic counselors, and so forth. Don't just throw the university health center's number on your syllabus and call it a day. That's not helping students. Disability Visibility Project has written about the National Mental Health Crisis Line as has Mad In America and I recommend both if you're interested learning more about non-consensual active rescue. Key points:
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